As usual, I have so much to report I can't keep track of it all. First, I want to tell you that I suspected Korea would be as ugly, dirty and evil as Jakarta. It was not just my sordid mind playing tricks on me. Our worldly reporter, Forrest P., confirmed the dangers of going ashore in Korea as, "You're on your own in Korea." I was prepared for danger or even confinement aboard the ship for the duration of our stay. As it turned out, the exact opposite was the case.

I must in all good conscience congratulate the people of Masan, Korea, for having the best-kept, most organized and colorful port in the world. This place is dead sharp, from the clean waters and small islands to the beaches, the buildings and roads. Hell, the docks are even landscaped.

The residents aren't proficient in English, but the new highway signs are posted in Korean and English. However, there are no English street signs in Masan, so getting around the town of 500,000 is a guessing game. Everyone wanted to help though. Even the hotel maps printed in Masan were produced in English and Japanese, yet the cabbies couldn't read either. It's a bustling little berg on a gorgeous bay guarded by a series of islands and a substantial Naval installation. At one point a submarine that surfaced surprised us and tailed us for half an hour.

Here's a shot of the city as we motored into the port.

The fresh fish industry is considerable and around the area were crops of shell fish pods neatly guarded with lines of white floats in bays and inlets. But before we toss the lines to the dock, I must tell you a couple of stories about Constantine, our one-man sandblasting crew. He's about 5-foot-6, average build, with thick, black hair. He's the guy who got the tattoos in Jakarta. When we're in port he can't sandblast so they have him standing duty at the gang plank ever since we had the robbery in Europe. He also had a hand in preventing the mafia raid in Vietnam.

Recently he was on duty in one of the Chinese ports when he noticed that someone had taken a set of bolt cutters and an axe and slipped them off the ship. One of the stevedore supervisors allowed the tools to be concealed in a cart. Constantine discovered this ploy. He called all the stevedores together and busted them, telling them, "If you fuck me in the ass, I will fuck you to your face." He questioned the men, got a confession and had the man strip to his skivvies in the freezing cold. Then he asked him to leave the ship. His supervisor came aboard to complain and Constantine told him to take a leap. He would not turn over the man's helmet or gear.

Constantine is an interesting guy, and a biker of sorts. He has a family in Romania and calls home on the ship's satellite phone from time to time. His wife put him on the speaker phone recently at a family reunion and Constantine tells her, "I want to fuck you right now."

"I'll have to ask my family," she replied, which the family got a big kick out of.

He once was a train engineer in Romania and made $250 a month. He discovered that he could make substantially more as a seaman and through his underground connections got papers cut and found himself aboard a ship as a sandblaster. The officer asked him if he was in charge and the told the mate, "Sure."

He was told where to start the operation and he got the crew together and put them to work. It was a week before he had to pick up a nozzle himself. He had never operated a sandblaster and didn't know the first thing. He just watched the other guys perform the operation. "I had to look like I knew what I was doing," he said. Somehow he pulled it off.

Since we were just in China, we were placed under Korean quarantine. The captain jokes that since we were in Vietnam we were under quarantine in China, then China to Korea, next will be Japanese quarantine since we were last in port in Korea and in the United States under quarantine since we were just in Japan. One of the passengers caught a cold recently and we blamed all the quarantines on her sniffles.

Each port has its quagmire of administrations, contacts, customs and immigration. In this case, the agent had shore passes neatly printed for us. Since he had to print up shore passes for the entire crew, he had all the passengers printed on the same forms. Unfortunately, there were three women and myself. All of us had shore passes that indicated that we were in fact males and crewmen. We were busted at the gate because we were not on the crew list supplied to security. This was the first port that actually had security with a metal detectors. My Elishewitz locking blade knife was confiscated during a search, but it was returned when I rolled back in to the port. The uniformed guards were extremely helpful and courteous.

The first day in every port is usually spent trying to get a handle on the city. We're discovering that by the third day you can get a grip on most towns and begin to see the really cool shit. Prior to that you're hitting the tourist locations and walking in circles asking for directions. This city was clean, with well-maintained roads and more courteous drivers. The cars were generally new and full sized. By the end of the first day we had stumbled through a couple of hotels to quiz the staff on their English and travel information. Most of the locals didn't think there was much to see in town and others pointed us directly to the shopping areas.

This was taken in the Changdong shopping area. It is still a traditional area of narrow streets and unique booths. I didn't take shots of all the ordinary stores and high-rise buildings.

We've about had it with shopping, but we hit the area with traditional booths full of food, handmade crafts, pastries, you name it. We hit the major shopping high-rise, called the Dae Woo, which is full of the same shit we saw in Antwerp. We cruised the fish market, which was cool. I wish I knew the fish fare better because they had some strange shell fish, monster crabs, stingrays by the dozen, clams as big as your fist and some of the best oysters I've tasted in ages. We tried a small restaurant over looking the harbor where we had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor. Unfortunately, no one knew English. They had no menu and we were at a loss for communication, so we had appetizers and split.

We saw ladies and gentlemen in several places filleting fish in public.

I've been looking for a special silk Hau Fu dress for Sin Wu. Damn these dresses make Asian girls look like a million bucks. In our last Chinese port of Tianjin, shops were minimal. Of course as we wandered through narrow, booth-lined streets in downtown Masan, we discovered a section devoted to clothes and fabrics. If I was looking for a traditional Korean outfit or fine fabrics to make one with, I would have stumbled into the mother lode. Unfortunately, traditional Korean clothing looks like the garb of medieval warriors. There's nothing sexy about it. I kicked myself in the ass again for not jumping on the first slinky silk dress I stumbled upon in Dalian, China.

With our feet securely wet in the new burg, we returned to the ship with big expectations for the following day. I contacted the agent first thing in the morning and began to quiz him about finding us a tour guide/taxi driver and working out an itinerary. A plan was hatched for him to arrive at 9:30, hook us up and we'd be on our way. This agent already had a reputation for strolling onto the ship late. He showed at 10:30, but was very helpful except never informed us of a price.

We were to meet the cab at the gate at 11, but the cab didn't show. At 11:15 I called the agent on my handy satellite phone and he apologized for the delay. I called at 11:30 and at 11:45 a car screeched to a stop in front of me. A gentleman jumped out and began to apologize. Mr. Yang's reputation spilled over to his coworkers, who ask for forgiveness for his behavior. The man stood with us until the taxi arrived at noon. Then we began plan negotiations. The driver spoke very little English, but with the assistance of the co-agent we hatched a plan for a road trip into the hills to several ancient locales. Then we worked out a price for half day of $100 U.S. for four people. Altogether the plan changed three times, but was a success. We had a helluva drive out of the city into the valleys and hills surrounding the area. He took us to a restaurant for lunch that was also a sit-on-the-floor affair, where the beef was sliced and cooked at the table by the driver as he showed us how to eat it. It was killer.

This purportedly is the grave of Buddha.

We drove comfortably through canyons, passed miles of strawberry crops and went through old villages. All the kids getting out of school were in neat uniforms. We strolled through a couple of temple areas, including the one that contains the skeletal remains of Buddha. We were on time to watch the bell ringing monks drum tapping ceremony at the area of 31 temples. It was all very civilized and we discovered another country attacked by the Japanese. At one point in history they couldn't leave anyone alone.

This is a shot of a Korean bell used in religious ceremonies. There's a monster Korean bell on the hillside of San Pedro overlooking the coast. This reminded me of home.

Since we are on our way to Yokohama, Japan, my eyes began to focus in that direction. The country has less space than California, yet the population is almost equal to that of the entire United States, and it's made up of mountainous islands. That makes for a much limited living area, so we can expect crowds everywhere.

Good fortune befell our wintered selves. We witnessed the blossoming of cherry and plum trees to brighten the days with brilliant colors and new life. Bottom line, Masan, Korea, is a progressive area of hard working people who seem pleased with their surroundings and should be proud of what they've accomplished. The port was the finest we've seen yet. I continue to harp on harbors, but for an entire world industry harbors are a harbinger of what may come within the country, and in general they look like shit and represent the owner countries poorly, to say the least. It doesn't need to be that way.

A shot of the Leon in the Masan port the night we departed for Japan.

Some ship perceptions: There seems to be two elements that impact a vessel's longevity: rust and vibration. The chief engineer told me that most ships are mechanically sound when they are scraped due to surveyors finding of a lack of structural integrity. Ships are surveyed and reported on at regular intervals. If a ship fails a required inspection, it loses its classification, won't be allowed in ports and will be restricted from insurance coverage. This ship is over 20 years old and is rough around the edges but mechanically it's sound. So what would make a ship last longer? First I believe a system for fresh water cleaning could help the steel surface considerably. Generally the crew uses fire hoses fueled with salt water to spray the crap, grime, coal dust and wood chips off the deck. It's not the chemical agent of salt that destroys metal in less than two years, if a ship is not properly maintained. I was told that the sun's rays are reflected to 36 times their strength when shot through the crystalline surface of salt. Regular washings with fresh water would eliminate that threat, but what the fuck do I know? I'll ask an officer and report back.

There is also tremendous vibration, even on the upper decks of the ship, five floors above the engine room. I never noticed this level of vibration on a sailboat under motor power. It must take a tremendous toll on the mechanical stability of the vessel. I asked the chief engineer, who is Polish, if the engine was rubber mounted like the engines on cars. But his answer was in Polish and I couldn't understand him. I plan to go down to the engine room when we enter a port and observe the driveline under constantly changing demands to see for myself, but on the surface I would think that rubber mounting the engine and driveline would make a helluva difference to the durability of the overall vessel.

Here's a shot of a trike in Korea. Motorcycles are used all over China and Korea for transportation and deliveries. How about a flame job?

One more thought: This trip has been an eye opener from various standpoints. You can imagine that when I hear news from the states and I'm surrounded by Polish officers, I take it with a different, more humble approach. Of course I'm proud to be an American and generally feel that we have the opportunity to set the stage for the entire world in the future. That means we must take pride in how we represent ourselves to the world and respect others. That's a deep subject and difficult to even consider at the moment.

Give it some thought, but think about the following: I found out recently that the Japanese people have known for over a hundred years that they cannot live on this series of minute islands forever for many reasons. First, they don't have the resources, and second, they don't have the land. In the past they tried to expand by attacking China, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, all the fuckin' islands, the Philippines and the United States. Big mistake. That policy turned out the be over ambitious and a miserable failure.

After the war they told their kids to learn English, because they would hope to find homes in the United States. The kids rebuffed their parents and now are kicking their own asses. Again a generation is trying the same philosophy and this time more successfully. There is just not the space in Japan for all the people, or there won't be shortly.

Additionally, the people in China are studying the English language because the Olympics are headed to Beijing and because they recognize that the world embraces the English language. They too have discovered that communism is a miserable failure and in order to keep up with the world economy, the level of education on the planet and new weapons and products, they need to explore a more open democratic approach.

I have discovered that in every port the common language is English. When a pilot comes on board he always speaks broken English in addition to his traditional language. What's it all mean? Who the hell knows, but it's fascinating. I spoke to the Filipino 2nd officer today and he told me that many people in the Philippines believe that with their overcrowding the only way to escape is to build a family in America.

The world is rapidly becoming the same. There are old styles mixed with the new - McDonald's, Mobil and Kinko's everywhere. What used to be separate is mixed.

I would hope with English would come broader education, better business opportunities for the underprivileged countries and peace. But it will take understanding and intelligence from us. It's no surprise that the kids who come to the United States treat our educational process with so much more respect than our own kids do. They have absolutely nothing like it in most countries or it's only available to the very rich. We'll need to work on and prepare for a much smaller world working together as if all countries were simply states in a union world doing business together for a common good.

Am I dreaming or what?

On to Part 17